Dying For Siena (29 page)

It would be expensive.

The
Palio
was probably the only horse race in the world where the victor pays. All the bribes offered were nominal—to be paid up only if the
contrada
won. The Snail had a huge war chest, built up over the past years of not winning.

Dante calculated that winning the race this year would cost a hell of a lot of money. Everyone knew the Snail wanted a win badly, and had the horse and the jockey to do it for her, and prices had inflated accordingly. It could cost upwards of a hundred thousand euros to bribe other jockeys and celebrate the win.

Worth every penny.

Celebrations would last all year. Come September would be the victory banquet, where the Snail would host over five thousand people. The guest of honor would be Lina, the winning horse, tethered to the podium of notables and fed a special meal of oats and sugar from the traditional pewter platter.

Through the long winter months, there would be more dinners, seminars on the exact details of the seventy-fivesecond run, with a second-by-second recounting of the glorious event. The school kids of the
contrada
would paint endless posters, which would have pride of place along the San Marco Center’s walls. Old men would reminisce, tears in their rheumy eyes, gnarled hands around a shot glass of
grappa
.

Snails would walk a little taller for a year. Snail women would become more beautiful, Snail men more dashing. The glorious win would be fodder for conversation a hundred—a thousand—years from now.

The square was alive with the raucous sounds of
contrada
chants, full-voiced boasts about tomorrow’s certain win. Men and women flirted in the dying evening light. The banners overhead ruffled and snapped in the evening air. The breeze made the candles on the long tables flicker.

Except for the clothes, it was a scene that could have taken place five or fifty or five hundred years ago with the same faces, same chants, same behavior. For almost a thousand years, the people of Siena had been celebrating the days of the
Palio
exactly as they were now—by eating, drinking, arguing and laughing.

This time tomorrow night wine would flow from the
contrada
fountain instead of water.

Life didn’t get any better than this. Dante put all thoughts of murder and Nick’s love life out of his mind and raised his voice.

“
Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“A-a-aquila!”

“A-a-aquila!”

Four streets up, Faith sat at the long table in the cathedral square, smack in the middle of Leonardo Gori’s
contrada
, the
Aquila
, the Eagle. She was cheering lustily along with everyone else at the street-length table, wedged tightly in between Leonardo’s elegant frame and Paul Allen’s gangly length.

Leonardo was looking considerably less polished and cool now, the sweat-stained yellow-and-black
contrada
bandana hanging limply from his neck, eyes wild with excitement.

“
A-a-aquila!”

Faith chewed a local specialty—
finocchiona—
a light pink sausage made with fennel seed. After the first tentative bite, she’d loved it.

The cheer ended as the next course arrived, a platter of fried vegetables. Faith picked up a fried artichoke, light as air, put it in her mouth and nearly moaned.

Amazing.

The whole scene was amazing. It was the world’s largest outdoor restaurant—a whole city neighborhood eating in the streets—hundreds of people wild with yellow-and-black fervor.

Everything and everyone vibrated with excitement, the yellow-and-black silk flags with double-headed eagles flapping overhead, the bright banners hanging from the window sills, the people with yellow-and-black bandanas around their necks almost too excited to sit in their seats and eat.

From further on down the street, a group would start up a song that would be picked up along the huge table’s length. It was clearly a song about love, as the girls would sing a refrain and the boys would pick it up, throwing the words back in a slightly different version.

Anticipation and excitement were in the air, and happiness, too.

Faith savored the unusual feelings.

With the bandana around her neck, she had been unquestioningly accepted by the Eagles as one of their own. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t speak the language and had to answer fevered comments with a shrug and a smile.

The women simply smiled back at her and the men, from the codger across the table to the serving boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, flirted outrageously, while making sure her plate was kept piled up with food and her glass full of a delicious country wine.

Faith found herself using the flirtation lobe of her brain, atrophied up until now. It was wonderful.

She loved the feeling of being in a group of people all rooting for the same thing. The biggest communal undertaking in Sophie was vandalizing telephone booths, with boosting hubcaps a close second.

But Sophie was then, and Siena was now.

She drew in a deep, happy breath.

The servers were moving down the tables, stepping around the children who ran between their legs. Everyone was a parent as skinned knees were tended to and rowdy fights were stopped by the nearest adult.

Something wildly aromatic was ladled into her dish. Rice, only not any kind of rice she’d ever eaten before.

Leonardo leaned over his plate and took a deep sniff of appreciation. “This is one of the traditional dishes of Siena.
Riso Fratacchione
. The rice of the monks. Monks were known for liking their food.

“The rice is cooked with the local sausage,
pecorino
cheese and chili peppers. An ancient recipe.” He forked a bite into his mouth and closed his eyes. “
Dio mio,”
he murmured. “It’s enough to make a non-believer take vows.”

Faith smiled and chewed, then closed her eyes, too. Indeed it was.

Paul leaned forward, craning his long neck to talk to Leonardo. “I say, Leonardo, the conference went well this year, don’t you think? I thought there were some interesting papers…particularly Faith’s.” He looked at her warmly. “Jolly good paper that was.

“I e-mailed it to Sanders Whitby and he’ll be getting in touch with you about it. He might be asking you to do some follow-up research.”

Half of Paul’s
risotto
was in his beard, but Faith could forgive him that. She could forgive Paul anything, even his clothes. Sanders Whitby was one of the alpha geeks at that citadel of geekdom, MIT. Whitby was a mover and a shaker. That Paul had brought her paper to his attention was not only incredibly kind but also a major career boost. She felt a rush of gratitude.

“Thanks. Here.” She reached for a straw-covered flask, one of many that dotted the tables. “Have some more wine.”

“Absolutely.” Paul wiped his mouth and beard, leaving only vestiges of the liver
patè crostini
and a few kernels of rice. He downed the glass in three long swallows.

“Marvelous,” he sighed. “Even better than last year. Somehow everything here gets better every year.” He winked at Faith. “You’ll see.”

A thrill rushed through her. Did this mean she would be asked back to the Quantitative Methods Seminar next year? It was almost too much to hope for. She knew she’d acquitted herself well, but there were plenty of bright mathematicians in the world. Having attended the Siena seminar even once was more than she’d ever expected.

Paul leaned forward again. “What do you think, Leonardo? Do you think we’ll be seeing Faith again next year?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Leonardo smiled secretively. “Depends.”

On who else had published an interesting paper. On the cross-links Leonardo might have established with other universities in the meantime. On the moon and the tides, for all she knew. Faith understood completely and tried not to feel disappointed Leonardo hadn’t immediately said that, of course, she would be here next year.

Leonardo forked in the last large bite of
risotto
and patted his lips elegantly with the paper napkin. He sat back with a pleased sigh and his cheeks blew out delicately in a suppressed belch.

“Have you heard of the
Monte dei Paschi
, Faith?”

Monte dei Paschi
…
Monte dei Paschi
…
She’d seen the sign everywhere around Siena.

“A…bank?” she asked.

“Not just
a
bank,” Leonardo corrected. “
The
bank. Certainly around here. The oldest bank in the world. It was founded in 1470, and it’s been successful ever since. How do you suppose they achieved that? Success for almost six hundred years?”

Faith opened her mouth and closed it.

Leonardo went on. “By staying ahead, my dear. By anticipating events. By riding the crest of the wave.” He poured himself some more wine, sipping it appreciatively. “And what’s the newest wave?” he went on. “The latest thing? What has to be understood if you want to survive economically in the twenty-first century?”

“The dotcom revolution. The new economy,” Faith answered dutifully. “Even if it’s tanked, it has to be understood.” She shrugged. Any dummy knew that.

“
Esatto
!” Leonardo cried. “Very good, my dear.” He patted her hand and leaned closer. “The
Monte dei Paschi
, which has a long and glorious tradition of knowing exactly when to strike and how, has decided that now is the right time to study the new economy. After the dotcom crash, before the next upswell that will muddy the waters again.

“So it is setting up a foundation called the New Economy Foundation, right here in Siena, to study the econometrics of the information revolution. The foundation will be very generously endowed. Very generously.

“We’re calling in the top econometricians in the world. Wanasaki, Morgensen, Kublokov and many others. Plus guest speakers will be coming from the world of the new economy itself. Bill Gates has agreed to come. The head of the Foundation will be Renato Cozzu.”

Faith’s eyebrows rose. The Sardinian telecom wizard was legendary. He had parlayed a small computer dealership into one of the largest telecommunications industries in the world and had then sold it, when the lire still existed, for an amount of lire too big to fit onto a pocket calculator.

“The Foundation will be working closely with the University of Siena Math Department. I will be vice president of the Foundation.”

“Sounds interesting.” That was an understatement. It sounded like a groundbreaking event. What a privilege to be one of the first to hear of it.

“Yes, very.” Leonardo poured her some more wine.

She sipped, getting a little buzz from the alcohol, a bigger buzz from the feeling on the inside of something new and big.

“We’re calling in the best people we can find to carry out one-year study programs within the Foundation. And that’s why, my dear Faith—” He filled her glass again.

How had her glass gotten empty so soon?

“That’s why Renato and I thought we’d like to offer you a year’s contract, starting now. He was quite taken with your paper.”

“That’s nice—” she started, then stopped. Everything stopped for an instant. Brain, heart, breath. Her eyes widened. “A year’s— You want…
me?
”

“Now you mustn’t worry about your job at St. Vincent’s, my dear.” Leonardo patted her hand. “I’ve already spoken with Griffin and he’s willing to suspend your contract for a year, with a guaranteed job after the year is over. He said it was worth it to the department to have someone from St. Vincent’s working on such an important project.”

Faith’s head swam. “Leonardo, I don’t know what to say. I just—”

“Well, you say yes, of course.” He frowned at her. “We do understand you’ll have to give up your apartment, your job and your friends for a full year, but we can make it worth your while. We were thinking of a stipend of fifty thousand dollars for the year.”

She choked. Her salary last year had been on the stingy side of twenty thousand dollars and it covered bread, but not butter, and certainly not jam. Fifty thousand dollars would mean walking in tall corn.

She would have to give up a one-room, basement apartment the landlord called a studio apartment but which had originally been the laundry room. It was damp and cold in the winter, and damp and hot in the summer. Her friends… The only real friends she had were Lou and Nick, and they came over here often anyway.

“We would pay for an apartment in the center of Siena and settling-in costs. Say…ten thousand? Tax-free, of course. Americans abroad don’t pay taxes on the first seventy thousand dollars, so the money would be free and clear.”

“This is so sudden.” She shook her head, wondering if the alcohol had damaged her brain. “It’s hard to—”

“We’ll pay your trip back, so you can wrap things up in Deerfield. Business class, of course.”

“Of course,” she murmured. She’d never flown anything but cattle class.

A group of youngsters sitting at the next table over burst into song. The way she was feeling, it should have been the theme from
Rocky
, but a
contrada
song did just fine. Just fine.

“Ah, that’s settled then.” Leonardo sat back in his chair with a sigh and pulled a green bottle from a bucket of ice under his chair. “
Pinot Brut
,” he said reverently, and popped the cork. He gestured to one of the boys, who brought some champagne flutes on the run.

Paul had been talking to Jean-Pierre on his right, but turned his head at the pop. “So she accepted, eh? Jolly good. It’s going to be an interesting mix of people at the Foundation. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of you, Faith. I’m going to be a Foundation consultant.”

He held out his big hand and Leonardo put a flute in it. Paul downed it in one swallow. “Ah, fine stuff. I’m really looking forward to spending a lot of time here.” He winked at Faith and held the glass out again.

“You knew?” she asked. “You knew Leonardo was going to ask me? Is that what you were talking about?”